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History Of The TB-303: Roland's Accidental Legend - DJ TechTools

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History Of The TB-303: Roland’s Accidental Legend How did the TB-303 bass synthesizer become such a well-known and highly regarded sound in dance music? Today guest contributor Akhil Kalepu goes in-depth with the full history of the Roland TB-303 and how its shortcomings became some of the most sought after sounds in the era of acid house that followed. Featured Gear: TB-303Manufacturer: RolandDate Released: 1982 (production ended 1984) In a world of software emulations and digital workstation, it’s hard to be impressed by a single oscillator monosynth, but few electronic musical instruments have made an impact as big as the TB-303. Several machines have entered electronic music history as pivotal artifacts of the culture. Released in 1982, Roland’s “Transistor Bass” unit was a sleeper hit that became an iconic piece of electronic music culture, analogous to the Stratocaster for rock and the MPC for hip-hop. A retro ad for the TB-303 (alongside TR-606 and TR-808) from a 1982 Roland brochure found on Retro Synth Ads Created by Roland engineer Tadao Kikumoto, the box was largely written off as a failure after just 18 months of production. It was released alongside the TR-606 drum machine as an accompaniment for guitarists, but with unrealistic sounds and a difficult interface the box got little traction upon release. Roland stopped production in 1984, having sold only 10,000 units. The TB-303’s Quirks While many of the 303’s early appearances made use of the box’s unconventional nature, the acid house sound did not come together until the late 80s. Due to its commercial failure, there were lots of these bass units available for a low price, making them an attractive buy for bedroom electronic producers. Producers could choose either a saw or square wave, which is shaped from a saw wave using a single-transistor circuit, giving it a distinctive sound different from typical square waveforms. The TB-303 also has controls for decay, cutoff, resonance and envelope modulation which controls a 4-pole 24dB low-pass filter. All of this comes together with the 303’s notoriously difficult to use sequencer, which allowed users to control accent and portamento for each note. Watch the below video to see someone painstakingly program in Fatboy Slim’s “Everybody Needs A 303”: Unique circuitry linked accent control to the filter’s cutoff and resonance and kept notes at a fixed slide time which enabled the 303 to create intricate bassline patterns on a single octave keyboard, the signature “squelching” bass sound of acid house. Producers further defined the sound with distortion, creating a denser, harmonic rich sound by utilizing guitar pedals or even just overdriving the input of a mixer. Users could also exploit the system’s low voltage failure mode by removing the batteries, thereby erasing and completely randomizing the programmed patterns. Acid Tracks: Acid House’s Breakthrough Much of the TB-303’s beauty comes from idiosyncrasies like these, perhaps best exemplified by “Acid Tracks”. DJ Pierre, Spanky and Herb Jackson of Phuture released the track in 1987, a 12-minute jam session of trippy basslines and 707 drums (embedded below). Jefferson gave a copy of the record to Ron Hardy, another Chicago legend who played the record at Music Box. The track had to be played four times before the unique sound got a positive response, but “Acid Tracks” quickly became a hit and spread across the Atlantic to become a part of the Second Summer of Love. Britain’s burgeoning rave culture was in some part built by the 303, in addition to a thriving sound system culture and a newfound taste for ecstasy. Notable releases of the time include Josh Wink’s “Higher State of Consciousness”, DJ Pierre’s “Box Energy”, and “Acperience 1” by Hardfloor, the Dusseldorf-based acid trance duo that utilized up to six 303’s at a time. Prior to the release of “Acid Tracks”, the 303 made appearances on “Rip It Up” by post-punk band Orange Juice (1983), “Les Problemes d’Amour” by Italian disco producer Alexander Robotnik (1983) and “On and On” by Jessie Saunders (1984). Sleezy D’s “I’ve Lost Control” also lays claim to have been the first acid house record. It was release a year before “Acid Tracks”, which Phuture says they might have made in early 1985, so it’s impossible to determine which came first. Before “Acid Tracks” Another early adopter was Charanjit Singh on “Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat”. Singh’s track predates “Acid Tracks” by five years and is considered to be an independent originator of acid house. His fusion of Indian classical music with electronic disco was created in a completely different context than rave culture, just when synthesizers were becoming popular in contemporary Bollywood music, which already had a taste for disco sounds. Singh got ahold of the box in Singapore, and experimented with its glissando function at his home studio alongside a TR-606 and Jupiter 8 synthesizer. The a… http://bit.ly/1Xxo4KW

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"Controllerism in its strictest sense is the manipulation of digital audio by use of a hardware controller.

In the Laptop DJ world it is the equivalent of Turntablism, requiring skill patience and dedication to learn the craft.

Controllerists use a wide variety of controllers to manipulate audio from traditional DJ techniques such as Beat Juggling and Scratching to more advanced production techniques that can only be accomplished with the latest technology."